United Future
Hon Peter Dunne

United Future, Project Aqua and the truth

I wish to lay out here the facts concerning United Futureís position and to give a guide to how I see the whole issue moving forward from here.

The context of the debate is that many competing interests wish to exploit the water flow of New Zealandís fourth-largest river for hydro electricity, tourism, recreational, and irrigation purposes.

Obviously, not all those desires can be accommodated and there is no overall plan for allocating the water resources fairly and sustainably.

To remedy that lack, the Labour-led government has brought a Bill into Parliament, the Resource Management (Waitaki Catchment) Amendment Bill, which aims to establish a water allocation framework so that the amount of water available for these applications can be determined in a timely manner.

The resource management issues will be determined only after the allocation framework is completed.

I want to emphasize here that this Bill fast-tracks the process, not Project Aqua itself, as the National Party (which supports Project Aqua) constantly and wrongly asserts.

United Future has supported the Bill being sent to a Parliamentary select committee where we will work to improve its provisions so that affected communities will have a significant role in selecting the people who make the decisions on how the Waitaki River water resources can be best used.

We will also lobby the Government to ensure that community groups will have enough resources, financial or otherwise, so that they can present their cases without prejudice against the resources of a very large power company.

We confidently expect that when the Bill is reported back from the committee to Parliament, it will be in the best form possible so that the interests of local residents and the national interest are best balanced.

If the Bill is passed, we will examine the evidence brought out by the debate on whether Project Aqua is, or is not, the best use of the water resources in the national interest.

This is a very serious issue since, as my colleague Gordon Copeland and others have pointed out, New Zealand will be increasingly short of electricity from 2007 onwards.   We need additional electricity generation  - whether hydro, wind, geothermal, gas or coal fired Ė without which we are going to face significant shortages, with consequential major damage to our economy.

Given this critical situation it is important that we know as soon as possible whether Project Aqua will go ahead so that, if it isnít going to go ahead, we as a nation can take it out of the equation and start planning other alternatives.

As part of the upcoming process, United Future MPís will meet all relevant local bodies and affected residents in order to get their views.

Only then will we make our final decision on what should happen in the best interests of both local communities and New Zealand.